From meagre beginnings, the world of GAA publications has grown enormously in recent years. Not all of its output is Pulitzer prize stuff but even the availability of increasing numbers of volumes is helping to create some sort of an archive resource for the future.

There are also those which are of current interest and stand on their own merits rather than posterity's. Without prejudice to other publications this year, two books produced in recent months help shed divergent perspectives on amateurism, an issue which will become more and more important to the GAA.

Fennessy's Field (Red Lion Press, £15) is Enda McEvoy's lively - surprisingly so for such an exhaustive work - centenary history of St Kieran's College, Kilkenny, perhaps the country's pre-eminent hurling academy.

Aside from the sheer scale of the college's contribution to Kilkenny hurling (and surrounding counties - Nicky Rackard first came to prominence there), this scrupulously-compiled tale of rigorous tradition and the obligations accompanying it counterpoint the image of the modern GAA.

The patient cultivation of young hurlers for great things initially with the college and later with the county is bred into an institution like Kieran's. It makes for the longterm satisfaction of serving a great tradition and being a cog in its maintenance.

As interest in voluntary coaching declines amongst teaching staff around the country, as well as amongst all adults, and as inter-county players become restless about the steepling demands placed on their time, Fennessy's Field reminds us of an elite based on servicing the ideals of hurling rather than just success, and of an age when lack of competing distractions did indeed make the game the thing.

Shooting from the Hip by Pat Spillane and Sean McGoldrick (Storm, £9.99) has already attracted much more attention. The irrepressible subject got the full treatment on The Late Late Show.

This exposure was slightly spoiled by Gay Byrne's forgetting to mention the book - which prompted a panicky interjection from Spillane during the host's tribute to Noel Carroll who had passed away that afternoon.

For many, this was a characteristic exhibition of hard neck from a self-centred individual and Paul Kimmage in the Sunday Independent denounced it as such. Reaction to the book from colleagues on the great Kerry team was less than effusive and Jack O'Shea took issue with some of Spillane's observations in the Sunday Times.

But the stereotype can be a bit misleading. Spillane is certainly egocentric but all high-achieving sportsmen tend to be - as evidenced by the number of former team-mates taking exception to the book.

Something has been made of their absence from the book launch. Yet you get the feeling that that is how it has always been. Spillane recalls that after his then radical cruciate surgery none of the team visited him in hospital or when he was convalescing.

In person he is humorous, good company and not above telling stories against himself. In the chapter dealing with International Rules, he acknowledges that on the 1986 tour he wasn't Kevin Heffernan's type of player and admits to feeling intimidated when summoned to the manager's room to explain himself.

His preferred reputation as someone who "tells it like it is" can sometimes smack of ersatz controversialism but, amidst the blandness of much football punditry, he brings a welcome individuality to his role.

That the GAA tried to remove him from RTE coverage is privately ascribed to: the authorities found him an embarrassment rather than the Socratic gadfly of his own self-image.

This is a useful memoir of Mick O'Dwyer's teams by someone who played on all eight winning teams. And the impetuosity of his opinions is what makes it interesting. Someone with a smoother grasp of PR would have tarted up some of the judgments published here with the usual anodyne consequences.

Spillane was a pioneer of the modern, high-achieving Gaelic games player. His views on the evolution of the GAA reflect those of a wider constituency. We are frequently told that players don't want pay-for-play but just to be looked after properly. This isn't quite accurate.

Very few players would turn down the opportunity to be full-time sportsmen. Who can blame them? They dedicate a lot of time to preparing for matches despite the archaic structure which can mean one serious outing all year. To be able to concentrate on this without being distracted by financial worries has definite appeal.

Spillane's point that, increasingly, top players will be young and single is shared by many. Clare hurling trainer Michael McNamara says that there is no physical reason why players can't continue for 10 years, but that what he terms "material reasons" restrict top-class careers: jobs, marriage, commitments.

The argument in Shooting from the Hip that some form of semi-professionalism is inevitable in the GAA is not a strident demand - of the type advanced in a biography 10 years ago by a Welsh rugby international and memorably reviewed by Kevin Cashman in In Dublin as being "as urgent and turgid as a jackass's tool".

Yet the argument has its limitations. Payment of players is not as straightforward as in soccer and rugby, both of which sports have bled profuse amounts of money into paying players since the onset of professionalism.

Both games have an international dimension and consequently a market abroad to which players can migrate if good enough. No such dimensions exist for the footballer or hurler.

Whereas no one can argue that players should have to suffer financial hardship for representing their county, there is a further important difference between the GAA and other sporting organisations. Gaelic games are not profit-making activities.

Were semi-professionalism to be introduced, players would have mobility within the game and local loyalties would inevitably weaken with good players in poor counties simply migrating to the more successful units.

Breaking the link between teams and places will destroy the great strength of the GAA. The passion at matches from junior B finals up to Croke Park in September is based on a sense of community. In the crowd will be large numbers who actually know at least one of the players.

This is not to pass judgment on players' desire for remuneration but just to make the sobering point that inter-county players are as much part of an eco-system as St Kieran's. Fiddling with it carries big risks.